The present disclosure relates generally to information handling systems, and more particularly to auditing changes in a network of information handling systems.
As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Information handling systems such as, for example, server devices and user devices, are often coupled together in networks such as, for example, local area network (LANs), in order to allow for management and control of those server devices while allowing the user devices to utilize the server devices to perform a variety of network functions known in the art. It is sometimes desirable to audit changes occurring in such networks, and the auditing of such data can raise a number of issues. For example, the utilization of the server devices by the user devices in the network can generate relatively large amounts of data (e.g., millions of network events may be identified and recorded), which can make it very difficult to investigate why any given change or changes have occurred in the network. Furthermore, the operations of running reports on the collected data and filtering through the information provided in those reports to identify changes of interest is a time consuming, tedious task that is associated with relatively large productivity losses for network administrators that may be searching for a source, reason, or other information about an event or change that has occurred in the network. As such, finding answers to questions such as why a network change occurred, whether the network change was planned, and/or other information about changes in a network, along with the associated time necessary to determine such answers, often prevents networks administrators from understanding critical information about their network that could be used to manage the network better.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide an improved network change auditing system.